Washington, July 12 : A study has found that all-cause mortality rates are lower among moderate drinkers than among abstainers.

The author of the paper determined the extent to which potential "errors" in many early epidemiologic studies led to erroneous conclusions about an inverse association between moderate drinking and coronary heart disease.

His analysis was based on prospective data for more than 124,000 persons interviewed in the U. S. National Health Interview Surveys of 1997 through 2000 and avoids the pitfalls of some earlier studies.

He concluded that the so-called "errors" have not led to erroneous results, and that there is a strong protective effect of moderate drinking on coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality.

In the present paper, non-drinkers had much higher risk of death than did almost all categories of subjects consuming alcohol. The author contended that these results lend credence to the argument that the relationship between alcohol and mortality is causal. (ANI)